Figures and movements in seventeenth century conspiracy plays
"This dissertation addresses the problem of the French aristocracy's definition of Self at a precarious moment in its history--a moment in which the aristocracy finds itself confronted with a rising absolutism ""from above"" while having to grapple with an epistemology in full transformation ""from below."" This transformation can best be described as a modulation from the Aristotelian paradigm to that of the Cartesian ""rationalist"" model. Among the epistemological figures undergoing a change in configuration were those of language, socioeconomic relationships and the perception of the physical world--three figures vital to conspirators who needed to communicate among themselves, who needed to form viable working relationships and who needed to envision logistic strategies in order to successfully bring about the ruin of the enemy (the sovereign). This study thus adopts as separate points of departure these three areas in which the necessity of working together dictates a certain behavior to the aristocratic conspirators and which provide them with the opportunity of re-defining themselves as a force independent of and opposed to the sovereign. The question asked is the following: In the midst of one epistemological break-up and the advent of another, are the thought patterns immanent to the new epistemology appropriated, remodeled and/or rejected by the conspirators? In other words, are the aristocratic conspirators successful in their attempt to re-ground their identity as a separate group vis-a-vis the sovereign?"
Language, Modern, Literature, Romance, Theater
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign